Executing Justice: A look at the cost of Pennsylvania's death penalty

Pennsylvania's death penalty system since 1978 has produced three executions at a stunning cost: $272 million each, for a total of $816 million, according to a Reading Eagle analysis.

The revised analysis of the death penalty's cost to taxpayers dwarfs the $350 million total the paper estimated in 2014.But, this cost appraisal is also conservative, calculating - over nearly four decades - the expense of sentencing inmates to death rather than life in prison.The total tally, at least one researcher said, could easily top $1 billion.Death penalty critics note that the money - in a time of constricting budgets - drains public coffers and could be spent to fund a wide range of services, including sorely needed road construction or bridge repairs, while supporters doubted the costs could reach $1 billion."We're scratching for every dollar that we can right now," said state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, a Montgomery County Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "To continue to spend that kind of money is hard to justify."

| Ed Marsico

Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico said the estimate was inflated.

"I think those numbers are way overblown," said Marsico, who as a staunch capital punishment supporter has condemned the governor's moratorium on executions.Marsico added, "I'm not saying there aren't more costs, but not to that extent."The Eagle's 2014 figure did not calculate the cost of everyone the commonwealth has sentenced to death since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1978, but instead used the 185 inmates on death row at the time, extrapolated from the method in a 2008 Maryland study by the Urban Institute.The total number sentenced since 1978 had been unknown until now because no state agency tracks all death sentences.The Eagle spent more than five months compiling a comprehensive list of the 408 inmates sentenced to death since 1978.Even the $816 million estimate, though, comes with an important caveat: It's in 2008 dollars and does not account for inflation; it doesn't include murderers who have had more than one capital trial and it excludes capital-eligible cases in which prosecutors unsuccessfully sought the death penalty.What the tally does show is that every day on death row is far more expensive than one in regular population.

| John Roman

John Roman, who authored the 2008 Maryland study on which the Eagle analysis relies, said because of the paper's conservative calculations, the cost of having a death penalty in Pennsylvania could well be more than $1 billion.

"We're spending tons of money - that can be spent for better purposes, whether that's education or crime prevention - on putting people on death row who are never going to be executed," Roman said.Pennsylvania has not put anyone to death who did not voluntarily give up their appeals in more than 50 years, when Elmo Lee Smith was electrocuted in 1962 for the grisly rape and murder of a Philadelphia schoolgirl in 1959.Noting capital punishment has enjoyed its greatest support among those who favor smaller, more cost-effective government, Roman added, "At the end of the day, I think it's worth asking why people support the death penalty."

Life is cheaper

Capital cases are more complex and costly at nearly every step of the process. They involve more lawyers, witnesses, experts and pretrial motions, in addition to a separate sentencing trial.

Contrary to a persistent belief that capital punishment is more cost-effective than life imprisonment, its complexity and length - with an appeals process that can and does drag out for decades - means a death sentence adds about $2 million to a murder case.The average capital-eligible case in which prosecutors did not seek the death penalty costs roughly $1.1 million.That includes, according to the Maryland study, $870,000 in prison costs and $250,000 for adjudication. This means the full cost for a single death sentence in Pennsylvania is about $3.1 million.The $816 million calculation only includes the additional cost of seeking and getting a death sentence.Had the Eagle tallied the total expense to taxpayers for the 408 inmates sentenced to death, the cost might be more than $1.2 billion.If, however, the commonwealth had not sought death in those cases, the cost to taxpayers could have been $448.8 million, all things being equal.Nearly 45 percent of the price tag is associated with prison costs, which is borne by taxpayers across the commonwealth, regardless of where the case was prosecuted."We're all picking up the tab," said Marc Bookman, director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, a nonprofit resource center in Philadelphia. "We've thrown away a billion dollars for nothing."

How money could be spent

So, what if the commonwealth had decided not to seek the death penalty in all those cases? What does $1 billion buy?

It's not nearly enough to shore up the $47 billion in unfunded liabilities in Pennsylvania's pension crisis. But $1 billion could pay off Reading's pension debt, ending the city's annual $17 million payment and still have about $4 million left to spend on parks, libraries, streets or anything else on a community wish list.And, it could fix a number of bridges.Roughly one in five of Pennsylvania's 22,660 bridges are structurally deficient, the second highest percentage in the nation, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association's 2015 national bridge inventory.

Potential property tax relief

Apply $1 billion to Pennsylvania's property tax relief program for one year, and local homeowners would see their rebates more than double. Relief payments would vary by school district, based on Pennsylvania Department of Education data. These are examples of how much extra cash property owners of local school districts would have saved off their 2015-16 bills, if the allocation between districts remained proportional:

$632: Reading

$610: Pottstown

$385: Daniel Boone

†$309: Exeter

$291: Hamburg

$241: Wilson

$182: Gov. Mifflin

ó Reading Eagle

While $1 billion won't fix all of the more than 4,700 bridges in dire need of repair in the state, it could replace more than 600 smaller, rural spans. Or it could buy more than 30 overhauls of major crossings, like the Penn Street Bridge.

With $1 billion, PennDOT could realize the long out-of-reach dream of building a limited-access highway from Reading to Allentown. Or, it could double the budget for Berks County's road work each of the next 15 years.The money spent on the death penalty system could go far outside the transportation world as well.With $1 billion, state aid to drug and alcohol programs could be tripled for a decade; state spending on services for veterans could be doubled for seven years; and funding for college grants and scholarships could be boosted by 50 percent for five years.The money could fund a one-time, 16 percent increase to the state's basic education aid to schools. Or it could double funding for prekindergarten programs for six years.And, applied to the state's property tax relief program for one year, $1 billion would more than double rebates to local homeowners.

Task force still working

The cost of capital punishment was among a host of concerns that led Pennsylvania lawmakers in 2011 to call for a task force to study such issues as bias and fairness in sentencing as well as the quality of counsel provided indigent defendants.

Delayed several times, the report has yet to be completed.Last year, Gov. Tom Wolf called for a moratorium on executions until the report is done, saying the system was unfair and dysfunctional. He also cited the Eagle's cost analysis, the first of its kind in the state."The governor's decision to issue temporary reprieves, while he awaits the study being conducted by the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Commission, is based on a flawed system that has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, in some cases unjust, and expensive," Jeff Sheridan, Wolf's spokesman, said in an email to the Eagle.Although the commonwealth has studied, but not yet estimated the costs to taxpayers nor conducted a cost-benefit analysis to determine the efficacy of state-sponsored executions, there is widespread consensus that the system in Pennsylvania is broken.Almost half the state's death sentences have been overturned on appeal and the formerly condemned given life sentences or less, with ineffective counsel the most common reason.In October, an Eagle investigation found 15.1 percent of capital defense attorneys with a client sentenced to death in the past decade were disciplined for professional misconduct at some point in their careers.Over the past 30 years about 3 percent of all attorneys in the commonwealth have been disciplined."Even when cases are tried on the cheap, which is systematically the case in Pennsylvania, capital cases still cost more," said Rob Dunham, a former federal public defender in Harrisburg and executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. "A pennywise capital trial results in a pound of foolish appeals."

| John T. Adams

Berks DA weighs in

While Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams mistrusts the Eagle estimate, saying noncapital cases can be, like with the extradition and prosecution of Miguel Torres, equally as costly, he does acknowledge the expense can have a chilling effect.

"I am cognizant of the fact it is an expensive proposition," Adams said. "The cost and the collateral consequences do concern me and is a factor in whether I will seek the death penalty."Historically, capital punishment has long enjoyed unwavering support from tough-on-crime conservatives, who are now finding reasons, including its cost, to be concerned about the death penalty.But costs alone, district attorneys say, should not be a determining factor in whether to keep or abandon capital punishment in Pennsylvania."From the criminal justice perspective, the decision as to whether to charge or to file are not based on dollars and cents," said Richard Long, executive director of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association. "It's based on the law."